When we first meet Halle Berry’s Storm in ‘X-Men’, she’s established as a hero pretty quickly. Ororo Munroe is shown in the classroom teaching her students, but she also suits up and jumps into action along with the rest of the X-Men when Magneto and the Brotherhood start causing some trouble. But there isn’t too much backstory for Storm in any of her appearances on the big screen. Well, it appears that we’ll finally be getting into the iconic character’s origins this year thanks to ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’.
While speaking to Screen Rant during a set visit over the summer, actress Alexandra Shipp talked about the differences between her version of Storm in Bryan Singer’s upcoming follow-up to ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’. One huge difference is that Ororo will be fighting the X-Men this time around as she stands alongside Apocalypse as one of his Horsemen. But we’ll also be learning about where she came from and the various hardships that she had to suffer at a young age:
“This Storm is a little bit different because you’re meeting her in Cairo. You’re seeing… where she comes from. You’re seeing all the pain that she’s gone through. It’s not like she’s in the mansion having a great time. She’s so different from all of the other kids because they come from families. They come from some sort of love and support, whereas Storm hasn’t had that since her parents died when that plane crashed into the house when she was like, five.
The only mutants that she knows are the mutants who use their powers for stealing… It’s not like, ‘Oh, we’re going to save the planet’, it’s like, ‘Forget the planet, I need money so I’m going to distract you with some wind and then I’m going to pickpocket you.’ She’s in survival mode, so when she meets Apocalypse, she’s hit this revelation where she’s been struggling to feel like she belongs somewhere. Then this extremely powerful being comes to her and says, ‘I’m what you’ve been waiting for, I will take care of you’… I don’t necessarily see her as a bad person, or as a bad mutant. I don’t see her as a villain. She doesn’t know that she’s a villain. That’s just all she’s ever known.”
By the sounds of things, Singer and company are sticking pretty closely to Storm’s comic book history. Finding her in Cairo picking pockets is something that comes directly from the pages of Marvel Comics, but another hint of her upbringing can be found in her voice. Shipp shared later in the interview that she adopted a Kenyan accent for the role and will also be speaking Arabic in the film. Now with these elements of her origins being included, I’m wondering whether Ororo’s claustrophobia will come into play as well.
Are you excited to finally get some of Storm’s backstory in ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’? Do you think that Alexandra Shipp’s version will be better than Halle Berry’s? Sound off in the comments below.
‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ starring Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Ben Hardy, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Sophie Turner, Lana Condor, Olivia Munn, and Oscar Isaac opens in theaters on May 27, 2016.
